When using Zend Framework, you can set different configurations for different environments. For instance, you may use a local database copy in a development environment, and a different centralized database in a production environment. Getting the environment defined properly can be a bit of a challenge sometimes. DASPRiD on the IRC channel #zftalk, has devised a method that seems to work well and posted it to the the inter-web for all to see: http://www.dasprids.de/blog/2009/03/25/determining-the-environment-in-yo...
Related to this, I have just discovered that if you have your Apache server configured with "AllowOverride None", some parts of Zend do not work properly (like rewrites, setting environment variables, etc.). Make sure you have "AllowOverride" set to something reasonable. On an internal development box, you can use "All" to cover all the bases....